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Posting cell phone pictures - DANGER! - Page 2

post #31 of 39
4/15/11 at 8:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Willowy View Post
Um, wow. Better lock your kid in the closet.
Sometimes I wonder if people are reading the same thread as me. I don't get the sarcasm.
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post #32 of 39
4/15/11 at 8:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockcat View Post
I understand your concerns, but an ounce of prevention...
If an ounce of prevention cause people to worry and stress unnecessarily, or keeps their children from living a normal life and learning how to be independent, is it worth it?

If blocking their GPS thing on their phone makes people feel better, they should do it. But it won't make a bit of difference in their (or their childrens') safety.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockcat View Post
Sometimes I wonder if people are reading the same thread as me. I don't get the sarcasm.
I wasn't really being sarcastic. People are scared of exactly the wrong things. People like to be scared of scary things like internet pedophiles and sharks and strangers. When the real threat comes from mundane things like boyfriends and parents and cars.

Statistically speaking, a child is safer riding his bike in the street without a helmet, talking to strangers, chatting with unknown people on the internet than he is with his mother's boyfriend (unrelated men living in the home are THE greatest threat to a child's safety), but very few single mothers think twice about introducing their kids to their boyfriends, even if they make their kids wear a helmet and tell them to stay away from strangers, and keep them in the house all the time so nothing happens to them. Non-scary things don't scare us, even when they should.
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post #33 of 39
4/15/11 at 9:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockcat View Post
I understand your concerns, but an ounce of prevention...
Fair enough, it wasn't anyone on this site, but just the TONE of that shameless news broadcast that gets to me and the fact that they seem to do it all day everyday. Everything is "tune in tonight or something horrible will happen"! And it seemed that might be responsible for the very excited reaction from someone watching something specifically designed to illicit fear and alarm.

In my opinion, the only real big cause for concern for parents when it comes to strangers on the internet, is if your tweener is soliciting sex on the internet. We all I'm sure remember how it is when those hormones first kick in full force, and if a kid starts actively chatting people in a hookup chat or just random place and asking for sex and inviting people over while the parents are away, then bad things are likely to happen. There's also tons on the internet that is not suitable for minors, so parental control software is a good investment on the family computer preferably put somewhere in an open area (kitchen/living room/etc). The other risks are statistically insignificant IMO compared to other everyday activities.
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post #34 of 39
4/15/11 at 10:26am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Willowy View Post
If an ounce of prevention cause people to worry and stress unnecessarily, or keeps their children from living a normal life and learning how to be independent, is it worth it?

If blocking their GPS thing on their phone makes people feel better, they should do it. But it won't make a bit of difference in their (or their childrens') safety.

I wasn't really being sarcastic. People are scared of exactly the wrong things. People like to be scared of scary things like internet pedophiles and sharks and strangers. When the real threat comes from mundane things like boyfriends and parents and cars.

Statistically speaking, a child is safer riding his bike in the street without a helmet, talking to strangers, chatting with unknown people on the internet than he is with his mother's boyfriend (unrelated men living in the home are THE greatest threat to a child's safety), but very few single mothers think twice about introducing their kids to their boyfriends, even if they make their kids wear a helmet and tell them to stay away from strangers, and keep them in the house all the time so nothing happens to them. Non-scary things don't scare us, even when they should.
Even if the risk is minimal, why take it when it's so easy to prevent?

As far as greater risks - sure, there are a lot of them and parents have to have balance between letting their children experience life and keeping them safe.
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post #35 of 39
4/15/11 at 10:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ducman69 View Post
Fair enough, it wasn't anyone on this site, but just the TONE of that shameless news broadcast that gets to me and the fact that they seem to do it all day everyday. Everything is "tune in tonight or something horrible will happen"! And it seemed that might be responsible for the very excited reaction from someone watching something specifically designed to illicit fear and alarm.

In my opinion, the only real big cause for concern for parents when it comes to strangers on the internet, is if your tweener is soliciting sex on the internet. We all I'm sure remember how it is when those hormones first kick in full force, and if a kid starts actively chatting people in a hookup chat or just random place and asking for sex and inviting people over while the parents are away, then bad things are likely to happen. There's also tons on the internet that is not suitable for minors, so parental control software is a good investment on the family computer preferably put somewhere in an open area (kitchen/living room/etc). The other risks are statistically insignificant IMO compared to other everyday activities.
You are SO right about the news. I always think when they say "Alarming news that could threaten you (or something like that) coming up at 11." Why don't you tell me now before I die!
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post #36 of 39
4/15/11 at 11:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ducman69 View Post
My concern is that parents, especially new parents in my experience, are already far too protective of their children. And personally, I blame a constant bombardment of media fear mongering for this somewhat recent cultural shift in the United States. To date, no child has ever been abducted by a stranger in a Disney theme park for example per snopes, a venue with a plethora of children, often unsupervised, in a mass of people easily lost.

Child abductions are uncommon, and rape is a very small fraction of those abductions. And of those sexual abuse cases, statistically close to 30% were relatives and 60% acquaintances, leaving the possibility of some stranger finding a picture of your child and then using that geotagging feature to abduct him or her to stratospherically improbable, on the magnitude of being struck by lightning... twice. And yet, in polls around 75% of American parents are afraid of their child being abducted and molested by an online sexual predator they've never even had communication with.

My sister and I always walked a couple miles to the public bus station in Europe as kids to get to school, and were free to use our bus pass to head to town when we liked, and I am very thankful that fear-mongering half-truths and false statistics news shift had not taken hold there as a means of marketing their programs. Around here, it seems parents are afraid of even having their kid play in the neighborhood park without constant vigilance.
It's not just the U.S. anymore. While it's statistically improbable that a child or teen will be abducted, molested and/or murdered by a stranger, it unfortunately does happen. Here's a sample of this week's major headlines in Germany (separate cases):
Suspected serial killer admits to slaying 3 boys

Quote:
Ten years after the murder of a nine-year-old child in Germany, police said Friday a man had confessed to killing him and two other boys and was suspected of further murders in France and the Netherlands.
Court says Bodenfelde murder suspect admitted to cannibal acts
Quote:
German news agency DPA said the man also ate body parts belonging to one of the teenagers killed in the town of Bodenfelde. Court spokesman Tobias Jakubetz told DPA on Friday that the defendant had admitted to cannibalistic acts.

In late November, 26-year-old Jan O., confessed to the murders of two Bodenfelde teenagers: Nina, 14, and Tobias, 13. Their bodies were found in a wooded area on the outskirts of the town.
There's quite a bit of fear mongering on the part of the media, just as there are more than a few parents who seem blissfully unaware that their children could fall victim to a predator.
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post #37 of 39
4/15/11 at 2:30pm
Yes, bad things sometimes happen (and my heart breaks for every parent who's ever lost a kid in any way). And sometimes those bad things are caused by serial killers and pedophiles. But not often. Let's see, that German serial killer killed 3 kids? Probably that many die in car crashes every hour (I don't actually know Germany's car accident statistics, just guessing). But now everyone is going to run around scared of serial killers, but not cars? People are funny.
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post #38 of 39
4/15/11 at 3:30pm
Well, that certainly is news, and I haven no problem with it as long as the headline isn't, "BREAKING NEWS: Cannibals on the Loose in Germany; Is your Child Safe? Tune in at 7PM to find out!" and then try to convince people that doing something common was the cause of getting singled out to create unrest in the public just so they will tune in next week to be safe and not miss anything else thats out there to get them.
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post #39 of 39
4/15/11 at 3:53pm
Oh my gosh, I do post pics occasionally of my kids on here, I am goin to be deleting all the pics of my kids on my photobucket and sorting my blackeberry out, thankyou for posting this.xx
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